In the heart of this region lives the queen of the Giant Spiders, an evil and cunning child of Shelob, spawn of Ungoliant. Her sense extend as far as her web, and the strands of her wen cover acres beyond counting. To steal quietly through her realm would be costly at best, and impossible at worst, so this bloated creature must be slain and her blood scattered.

Introduction

In the Fall of the Necromancer supplement, Games Workshop showed the reader how to construct the Lair of the Spider Queen that was once a mausoleum. I liked this terrain project but have always thought of it as a little bit basic. So this then is an enhanced version of that project.

Casting the Blocks

For this project we will be making use of Hirst Arts mold #60, to begin with cast this multiple times, you won't need all the bricks that it can cast. Use the picture below to identify the bricks you will need:

Building the Walls

The basic walls are relatively easy to assemble once the bricks have been cast. Use the pictures below to assemble the walls, gluing the bricks together using PVA. You will need two side walls:

You will now need to glue all four walls together, it is advisable whilst building the walls to use a set square to make sure everything is at a 90 degree angle.

Buttresses

The walls are covered in ten buttresses, three on each side wall and two on each of the front and back walls. These are made from foamcore pieces. Cut ten 2" by 1/2" and ten 1 1/2" by 1/2". On each of these twenty pieces angle the top slightly.

Glue them together so that one shorter piece is stuck to a longer one and glue them around the outside of the walls.

Cut twenty pieces of card 1/4" by a little bigger than 1/2" and glue each of these into the angled sections of the buttresses.

The Roof and Base

Cut a piece of foamcore that is the width and length of the structure and glue this onto the top of the walls. Line the top of the roof with bricks made up of pieces G and D. They should line up with the bottom of the foamcore so that they overhang the top. Also make sure that a D brick is in the centre of the front wall.

Cut a piece of foamcore an inch wider and longer than the over all structure and glue flagstone textured plasticard on to this. Glue the mausoleum onto the centre of this.

The Door

The door is made from balsawood and cut to size to fit the doorway. Using a ballpoint pen, score a door plank pattern into the door. Cut two strips of card and glue these to the top and bottom areas of the door, also glue a small square of card to the right hand side.

The door is glued in place by the use of a cardboard hinge.

On the centre of the ridge above the door, glue a Warrior of Numenor shield.

Painting and Detailing

Undercoat the entire model in black. I used tester pots of paints from Wilkinson's. First I drybushed in Almost Black, then a light brushing of Flintstone. This will be a very dark grey building which is what I wanted as the Numenorean's used dark grey stone as seen in Helm's Deep in the movies. I then used watered down Elysian Green and Steel Legion Drab in patches to weather the building.

The door was painted by drybrushing Steel Legion Drab and then Karak Stone.

Around the edging of the floor I used PVA to glue the same flock as I have used on my gaming boards. In patches around the floor and on the wall I used PVA to glue some GW static grass.

Using Halloween cobwebbing material I covered the building to act as the cobwebs of the spiders.